Merry Newtonmas!
By Patrick Cruz
On December 25, I dare you to greet everyone that way. Strange right? What the heck does Isaac Newton have to do with Christmas?
Maybe you've heard Leonard Hofstadter in The Big Bang Theory say it. Besides the 25th of December being designated as the celebration of the birth of Jesus, it is also surprisingly the day the great physics genius Isaac Newton was born! December 25 isn't just a day of celebration for Christians, but also for the guys in the lab coats in physics labs all over the world.
Have a Newtonian Christmas! Dr. Sheldon Cooper of the Big Bang Theory holding up a bust of Newton
to place atop the Christmas tree. (Credits to betternovembers.tumblr.com & The Big Bang Theory)
Besides these two "celebrities", it was also on this day when a number of Nobel Prize Laureates were born! We have Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus (1876), Gerhard Herzberg (1904) and Ernst Ruska (1906). Adolf Windaus was famous for his study on sterols and their relation and importance to vitamins. Gerhard Herzberg, on the other hand, was known for his work on molecular spectroscopy (that is why we now know and have to study the structures of polyatomic molecules and free radicals. Yay!). As for Ernst Ruska, we wouldn't have the electron microscope around without him.
So big whoop, it's the birthday of Newton and a bunch of other scientists also. What else is there? Well, what I consider to be one of the best "gifts" we could ever get for Christmas is the internet! It was on this day when the first run of what will eventually become the World Wide Web was launched. Now this is a gift that keeps on giving and giving.
Also, though not as joyful an occasion, this is also a day to remember for the European Space Agency. They sent a probe to Mars called Beagle 2, in honor of the ship that brought Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands - a voyage that led him to formulate the revolutionary Theory of Natural Selection. Sad to say, they lost contact with it on December 25, 2003. If it continued to work, we would have had clues as to whether life did exist on the barren Martian surface.
As you can see, December 25 is more than just a day for receiving (and giving) presents and getting fat from holiday feasts, but it is also a day for science. So when you see those Christmas lights, maybe take the time to see the wonder of those photons making up the light, or the maybe the vitamins and cholesterols contained in that big bite of ham (which will ultimately end up in your arteries..and your thighs).
So to everyone in the College of Science, I greet y’all a Merry Newtonian Christmas!
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